Senate approves FAA fix; House up next

Senators approved a last-minute deal Thursday night to eliminate furloughs to air traffic controllers after thousands of flight delays piled up nationwide this week.

The bill would allow the Department of Transportation to shift $253 million in funds to the FAA's operations account to prevent the worst of the sequester’s aviation pain, at least until Oct. 1, when the next fiscal year's automatic budget cuts hit.

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Republicans on FAA furloughs

Obama, GOP play sequester 'told you so' games

Flight delays stretched to three hours this week at some airports as pressure mounted from the flying public to patch a hole in the FAA’s budget for essential, frontline workers. The famously deliberative Senate was able to write and pass the legislation all in one day, with aides shuttling the final copy of the legislation to the Senate floor shortly after 8 p.m. — after many senators had already left for a weeklong recess.

The Senate approved it using a procedure allowing the measure to pass without a roll call vote after all 100 senators signed off on the bill. Some gave their approval en route to the airport for a flight home.

Next the bill goes to the House, which is expected to take up the measure Friday before it too leaves town.

“Tonight we worked together in the Senate to avoid total gridlock in our aviation system and avert the real harm that rampant delays would cause to our economy and jobs,” said Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who played a key mediating role in negotiations with House and Senate Republicans and the White House.

The White House's response was less glowing, however.

"It will be good news for America's traveling public if Congress spares them these unnecessary delays,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement late Thursday. "But ultimately, this is no more than a temporary Band-Aid that fails to address the overarching threat to our economy posed by the sequester's mindless across the board cuts.

“We hope Congress will find the same sense of urgency and bipartisan cooperation to help the families who have had children kicked out of Head Start, the seniors who have lost access to Meals on Wheels, the hard-working employees who have been laid off due [to] defense cuts, and the 750,000 Americans who have lost a job or won't find one because of the sequester by acting on a balanced deficit reduction plan like the one the president has proposed,” Carney added.

Senators working to fix the chaos in the skies fell short of including an explicit prohibition on closing 149 air traffic control towers that are set to lose their funding June 15 — lawmakers disagreed on just how much of the gridlock in the skies to alleviate. But Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a key architect of the bill, was cheered by the ability to find common ground.

“It’s nice to know that when we work together we really can solve problems,” Collins said on the floor after the bill passed.

A separate bill that drew bipartisan support from dozens of senators, written by Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), would have prohibited the Obama administration from shuttering any air traffic control towers. But that didn't make it into the legislation.

On the other hand, the Senate-passed bill provides an extra $21 million in funding flexibility above the $232 million cut from the FAA’s operations account because of the sequester. Moran praised the Senate for putting “common sense before politics” and said the amount would be more than enough to head off closures of the 149 contract towers, an important victory for the Kansan, who had held up a spending bill for days in March fighting to prevent those cuts.

But Rockefeller was more skeptical.

“This does not fix all of the problems the FAA faces because of budget cuts, especially for contract towers in rural communities,” Rockefeller said. “And it does nothing for other essential government operations and employees that also desperately need relief. But it's a start, and I'm committed to keep working on more solutions.”